Posts tagged with: torture

On November 19, the Acton Institute was pleased to welcome Marina Nemat to the Mark Murray Auditorium as part of the 2015 Acton Lecture Series. Marina was born in 1965 in Tehran, Iran, in what was at the time a relatively secular and free nation. (Granted, she lived under the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – the Shah of Iran – but as we were reminded a couple of weeks ago by Jay Nordlinger, when it comes to dictators you have to grade on a curve.) After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, she was arrested at the age of sixteen and spent more than two years in Evin, a political prison in Tehran, where she was tortured and came very close to execution.

Since 1991, Marina has lived in Canada. Her memoir of her life in Iran, Prisoner of Tehran, has been published in nearly 30 countries, and has been an international bestseller. In 2007, Marina received the inaugural Human Dignity Award from the European Parliament, and in 2008, she received the prestigious Grinzane Prize in Italy. In 2008/2009, she was an Aurea Fellow at University of Toronto’s Massey College, where she wrote her second book, After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed. Marina regularly speaks at high schools, universities, and conferences around the world and sits on the Board of Directors at CCVT (Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture) and on advisory boards at ACAT (Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture) and PEN Canada. She also teaches memoir writing, in Farsi and in English, at the School of Continuing Studies at University of Toronto and writes book reviews for The Globe and Mail.

In a piece for The American Spectator earlier this week, Mark Tooley of IRD evaluates the global warming dust-up at the NAE.

In “Prepare for Biblical Floods and Droughts,” Tooley especially criticizes the reaction of emergent church leader Brian McLaren, who used the examples of Noah and Joseph to argue for the legitimacy of a prophetic voice on climate change.

Tooley writes that we can expect

Global Warming to remain the main obsession of the evangelical left and of NAE leadership. It is, after all the perfect issue for left-leaning evangelicals to show their concern, while also relying upon the habits of their own sub-culture. Global Warming, as a metaphysical movement, warns of a cataclysmic judgment for “bad” behavior. Evangelicals are accustomed to that kind of preaching. Meanwhile, the liberal evangelicals want more government, higher taxes, and increased regulation of the private economy. They feel guilty about capitalism, and want other evangelicals to share in their guilt. Liberal evangelicals prefer not to talk about sexual sins. Carbon sins are a welcome substitute.

Tooley also criticizes an NAE statement on torture, saying that “it could just as easily have come from the National Council of Churches, and was crafted by a special committee dominated by activists and academics from the evangelical left.”

I’m no expert on the subject, having only seen a Fred Friendly seminar that addressed the topic and watching the dramatization of Sayid Jarrah’s character on “Lost”. Neither have I read the torture statement, but it’s not clear to me whether Tooley’s problem with the statement is the subject matter itself or the way in which it was treated. That is, could there have been an appropriately conservative statement on torture, or does any statement addressing that question necessarily mean it is a liberal political tool?

In any case, Tooley’s remarks about the alarmism of many on the evangelical left are well-taken, and should be tempered by a serious biblical perspective. I have it on pretty good authority that rising sea-levels won’t be the end of life on earth. Now an extreme sort of fire-based “global warming” (if that’s what you want to call it), that’s another story.